A new report alleges that the vineyard management company contracted by PlumpJack, the wine business founded by California Governor Gavin Newsom in which he still holds a financial stake, has a long history of employing illegal alien labor.
Reporters spent weeks in Napa examining operations at Oso Vineyard, a 129-acre property PlumpJack purchased in 2022 for $14.5 million, where Renteria Vineyard Management handles field work, for a new City Journal investigation.
PlumpJack’s own materials identify Oscar Renteria as Oso’s long-time vineyard manager, and neither PlumpJack nor Renteria Vineyard Management disputed the arrangement when contacted.
RVM was founded in 1987 by Salvador Renteria, an illegal alien from Mexico who arrived in Napa in the 1960s and began working in vineyards in 1964. His son Oscar later took over the company, which manages more than 2,200 acres.
Newsom did not divest his PlumpJack stake when he became governor.
Tax returns show he and his wife earned at least $11 million between 2019 and 2024, largely from wineries, restaurants, and investments.
The report found no H-2A temporary agricultural worker visa filings for RVM or PlumpJack’s estates after 2023, after earlier limited filings by a subcontractor.
Sources in the industry told the reporters that they believe roughly 80 percent of Napa vineyard field workers are illegal aliens, far above official estimates.
“I think it’s 80 percent,” the owner of a vineyard management company told City Journal on condition of anonymity. “If you’re legal, you have your Green Card, you have your driver’s license and all these things, you don’t want to be working in the vineyards.”
A former RVM employee who worked there illegally for more than a decade also said about 80 percent of the workforce lacked legal status and that management knew it, with a foreman sourcing workers from near the border.
City Journal reports:
We also spoke with a former long-time employee of RVM. This person has lived and worked in the U.S. illegally for more than a decade, and claims RVM was aware of his status while he was employed at the company. This source said the vast majority of the field hands at RVM were in the country illegally, including at least some workers on every crew and every job site.
“About 80 percent of all of us who worked there [were in the country illegally],” the source said. “The other 20 percent had regular status . . . . We’re talking about the majority across all the work crews being in the same situation.” When asked explicitly if RVM was aware that many employees were illegals, the source said, “Absolutely, of course. There was a lot of them.”
The source also claimed that while he worked at RVM, a manager had a contact in Mexico from whom he would source workers. “It was a foreman, and he did communicate with people over by the border to bring people from there, from an Ejido near Tijuana,” the source said. The source believes that RVM used the illegal status of workers to take advantage of them, claiming many workers were not paid overtime, and that safety and health regulations were often ignored, including in at least one instance of serious injury.
RVM does not appear in the federal E-Verify database.
When a source posing as a Mexican national without a green card or Social Security number called about work, an employee took the number and said a manager would follow up.
RVM also has a documented record of labor violations.
In 2022 the Department of Labor found wage-and-hour violations affecting 45 employees under the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act, resulting in back wages and penalties.
A 2017 Cal/OSHA inspection after an accident led to a heat-illness citation.
Private class-action lawsuits in 2024 and 2026 alleged minimum wage, overtime, and other labor code violations, with one settled this September.
Renteria has previously described some workers as having “complicated immigration status” and expressed concern about tracking that could lead to identification and deportation.
“They’re really nervous,” Renteria said in a 2013 interview. “Nervous they’ll be tracked and then somehow the possibility of being identified, and the fear of being deported or not being allowed to work. It comes up all the time in conversations when we outline the choices.”
Newsom’s spokesman said the governor placed his business interests in a blind trust in 2019 and has no involvement in PlumpJack’s operations.
A PlumpJack spokesperson said the company expects all vendors to comply with the law. RVM did not respond to requests for comment.
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